Opportunities

• • Opportunities
  • Opportunity Process
  • Opportunity Record
  • Creating a New Opportunity
  • Add a Product to an Opportunity
  • Close an Opportunity
  • Customizing the Opportunity Business Process Flow

Opportunities

Opportunities drive the sales process. All your prospecting and sales activities should lead to an opportunity where you will gather all the information for a potential sale.

An opportunity would typically be added by sales representatives who see that a customer is ready to buy a product. Here, you can track customer needs, qualify their budget, add their stakeholders and competition (if applicable), and then propose a product and a price.

Opportunity Process

Opportunities have four stages : Discover, Qualify, Propose, and Win.

When you set up a new Opportunity, it starts at:

Discovery stage

This is an introductory stage where you learn more about the customer and the opportunity. What is the customer looking for? How much is the deal worth? Click Discover to be prompted by a form asking for information to progress the sale to the next stage.

Note: The forms in the step flow show the minimum suggested information. Click believes it is reasonable to ask a buyer for a rough estimate of the deal size, understanding that at this stage, it's an estimate.

When you enter the amounts, you can click Next Stage to move the Opportunity along.

Qualify stage

This is where you will spend more time qualifying the opportunity. The more you know about the customer, stakeholders, and competition, the more likely you will win this business.

To say a deal is qualified, you as the seller should know when it's closing, how big it is, the current situation of the customer, what their needs are, who else the customer is considering, and which contacts are in the buying group.

A larger deal at this step will change the forms to include Stakeholders and Competitors, allowing you to add more information about the participants in the buying decision.

As you provide information on the form, the system will automatically mark the section as Complete.

Propose stage

In this stage, you will develop a specific proposal to meet the customer’s needs. You should have a very detailed picture of the proposed solution and how it will help the customer. On the opportunity form, you should add the required products and services.  You should document the proposed solution and intended benefits in the New Reality field.

As you add products and update the New Reality on the form, the system will automatically mark the sections as Complete.

Win stage

In this stage, you have received verbal confirmation that you have won, or you have confidence that you will win. Now you need to finalize the sale with a signed contract. Depending on the solution and the customer, this process can be quick or quite slow. In larger organizations or, for larger deals, it can involve many stakeholders including Legal, Procurement, Information Security and IT.

When the contract is signed, attach it to the opportunity (go to the Related tab and click Documents) and update the field to mark the step Complete. The system does not automatically detect a signed contract--this step is manual.

Check that the Opportunity Amount in your Opportunity matches your Contract amount as it may have changed.

Now you just need to mark the opportunity as won, either by clicking Finished on the Win step drop down or using Close as Won from the form ribbon.

Opportunity record

The Opportunity record shows the following tabs where you can add more information and calculations can automatically appear in some of these fields.

Summary tab

Shows summary information about the opportunity.

Timeline tab

Shows all the activities related to opportunities on the account. This includes both active and closed activities. Whenever an account is entered into an activity field, it will be captured here. You can also add miscellaneous notes. You can open, edit, and assign them from this screen.

Business Impact tab

An area to capture notes on the impact of your product on the company’s situation. This is where you can add more information about Current Situation, Customer Need and New Reality.

Current Situation

Describe the current situation for this account. Why did they engage with us? What doe they want to change?

Customer Need

Describe what the customer is looking for. What are their requirements? What would the ideal solution look like? How does it match with our capabilities?

New Reality

Describe the desired impact of a new solution for the customer. What does their business look like after they have purchased the new solution? What will it allow them to accomplish or achieve that they cannot today?

Competitors

List all of the companies you are competing against for this opportunity, since it is likely that the customer is also considering alternative solutions

Click the “All Competitors are Identified” button to confirm you have listed all of the competition.

• Note: Competitors must be set up in the Competitors section of the CRM area prior to selection. This can be done on the fly from the opportunity, by any user with a sufficient permission level.

Products tab

Add a Price List containing Product Units to an Opportunity to populate the record with pricing information, if estimates have not already been provided.

Buying Group tab

A list of contacts you can add that are stakeholders for this opportunity, otherwise known as the buying group. The Primary Contact of the opportunity will automatically become a Stakeholder. Usually these is more than one person involved in the buying process.

There is also a section for Competitors. It is likely that the customer is also considering alternative solutions. Find out who you are competing against and document it in this section.

Activity History tab

A view of all activities with the stakeholders that were associated with this opportunity.

Velocity tab

The velocity tab shows a dashboard that indicates how long the opportunity spent in the Discover stage and how many times the customer has emailed you.

A good sale will move quickly, spending little time in the Discover stage. Knowing how often a customer emails demonstrates how engaged they are in the opportunity.

The dashboard also shows the total age of the opportunity and the date of the last engagement.

Related dropdown

This gives you access to opportunity-related Activities, Documents and Audit History which presents a full list of changes made to the account including the date, time, and user who made the changes.

Word Templates

The Word Templates option on the opportunity allows you to add and view word doc templates to send to contacts. An order and quote template that can be customized are included.

Creating a new Opportunity

To create a new Opportunity:

1. In the Account record, select the Opportunities tab and then click the + icon.
   
   
   
2. Enter the required information.
   Name - This might be a combination of the account name and the proposed product name. It is recommended to come up with an opportunity naming convention.
   Contact - Who is the primary contact for this opportunity? You can pick from the list of contacts on the account or create a new one.
   Source - Pick the source for this opportunity from the drop-down list.
   
   Source Details - Provide further details about the source of the opportunity.
   
   
3. Click Save. The Opportunity pane opens to the Summary tab that presents additional information fields.

Add a Product to an Opportunity

When you add products, important information goes with it. This helps take the guesswork and calculations out of the process and makes things easier for you and your team.

At a certain point in the process, you must add a product. To add a product:

1. Open the Opportunity and go to the Products tab.
   
   
2. Click the + icon to add a new product.
   
   
   
3. Click the Product field and press Enter to see a list of products. Your selection will appear along with the product unit, for example, a one-year subscription.
   
   Note: Products are pre-configured on a currency-related price list with the unit, price, monthly price, currency, whether it's a subscription or if it included maintenance. If you want, you can add a discount to the price.
   
   
4. Enter the product name or search the list of active products. Add the quantity, price per unit, and discount per unit if you know this information.
   
   
   
5. Click Save. Or, if you want to add another product, click Save and New.

You have now added your product(s) to the opportunity.

Close an Opportunity

After creating an opportunity and attaching a relevant product, you should have discovered the customer needs, qualified the buyer, and proposed a great solution. This is where you Close as Won or Close as Lost.

Close as Won

1. In an Open Opportunity, click Close as Won.
   
   The Opportunity opens in a new pane.
   
   
2. Select Close Date. This defaults to today's date. You can pick a specific date by selecting the calendar.
   
   
3. Fill in Decision Factors. Select the Look up icon and press Enter to see a list of Decision Factors. You can choose more than one. It is important to provide accurate information about why you won the opportunity to allow for win/loss analysis.
   
   
4. Click Select Elements to add them to the field.
   
   
   
5. Add an explanation to expand on the Decision Factors contributing to your win.
   
   
6. Click Save to close. The opportunity is now Won. Fields on the opportunity form are now locked.

The Opportunity Process flow moves to Win and is finished. From here, your management or financial analyst reviews the won opportunities and proceeds to generate orders.

Impacts: The account moves to the Implement stage in the csutomer lifecycle.

Close as Lost

1. In an Open Opportunity, click Close as Lost.
   
   
   
2. Select Close Date. This defaults to today's date. You can pick a specific date by selecting the calendar.
   
   
3. Select the Status Reason.
   
   
4. Enter the Selected Competitor, the competitor who won the opportunity. This is important for win/loss analysis.
   
   
5. Fill in Decision Factors. Select the Look up icon and press Enter to see a list of Decision Factors. You can choose more than one. It is important to provide accurate information about why you lost the opportunity to allow for win/loss analysis.
   
   
6. Click Select Elements to add them to the field.
   
   
   
7. Add an explanation to expand on the Decision Factors contributing to the loss.
   
   
8. Click Save to close. The opportunity is now Lost. Fields on the opportunity form are locked.

You will see the Win/Loss details at the bottom of the Summary page in the opportunity record.

The Opportunity Process reverts to Discover and shows that the Opportunity was not won.

Impacts: The Opportunity creation moved the new account to the Pipeline Stage. Losing the Opportunity moves the account back to the Detected Stage. Any lead score that was applied to the account is cleared to zero.

Customizing the Opportunity Business Process Flow

We have designed our Opportunity Business Process Flow so that it can be customized or removed to suit your needs. 

To customize the default Opportunity Flow, an admin must navigate to App Settings > Settings, open the Settings record, and then open the Settings record's Sales Tab. Here, you can edit the Process Name, Stage Names, and Velocity:

You can even add new Stages or customize the existing Stages by adding and removing Steps, modifying or reordering the existing Steps, and setting them to be required or not required. Click the chevron icon to expand and collapse the Stage properties:

We strongly recommend modifying the default Flow rather than creating your own new Flow from scratch. However, if you would like to remove Click's default Opportunity Business Process Flow so that you can replace it with your own custom Flow, an admin can do so by following these steps:

1. Navigate to Settings > Customizations > Customize the System
2. Select the Entity: Opportunity
3. Navigate to the Forms section.
4. Find 'ClickDimensions CRM - Edit Form'
5. In the Form editor, locate the block named 'Custom Business Process Flow Container'
6. Remove that block from the ribbon.
7. Replace it with your own custom Business Process Flow block.
8. Save
9. Publish the customization.

NOTE: While Click provides the flexibility for you to replace our default Opportunity Business Process Flow with your own, we cannot provide support for your custom Business Process Flows. Our team can answer questions about Click CRM functionality, but it is up to you to build and maintain your own custom Business Process Flow if you choose to replace the default flow.